In the 1940s, 1950s, radio was how America was entertained. Television was not widely distributed at that point. Families would gather around the drama, the series, like they gather around Netflix now. And, and there were the Lone Ranger and Tonto, "Hi ho, Silver!" And Silver with his coconuts for sound effects, (imitating walking) by the microphone, right? And so it was drama on the radio. One of the radio shows was a show on WGN Radio in Chicago, and it was Sky King. Now, if you keep in mind, this is the '40's, airplanes were still a big deal, it was a cutting edge technology to fly still. And Sky King was this guy with a great baritone voice, of course, he was a radio voice, and he would fly in whatever the drama was and he was the guy that would save the day and so on. And the voice behind Sky King was a guy named Earl Nightingale. And Earl pretty quickly realized there was no money in radio and he bought an insurance business, a general agency, and every Monday morning he would have a sales meeting and pump up his sales guys and send them out to sell insurance and he was very, very successful at it, all the way up into the late '50's. And one of the things Earl loved more than motivational speaking or jacking up his sales guys and getting them ready to go out and sell insurance was he loved to fish. And Earl decided he was going on a fishing trip in Canada. Well, his sales manager came to him and he said, "You understand that the two weeks that you're gone, sales are gonna go down because when you get these guys wired up on Monday morning, they're ready to go attack the world and they go out there and make sales. Without you here to do the pump up, the halftime speech for the football coach, they're not gonna do their thing, man and sales are gonna go down." Well Earl thought, well, that's not good, but I'm going fishing so I got to figure this out. So he goes back to his old radio days and decides he's going to record a talk. And he goes into the studio and records a talk just for the two week vacation. And the way you did a recording in those days in a studio was not tape, it was on an acetone record, a real floppy, real thin looking record. Any of you old enough to remember getting a record on the back of your serial box, that kind of a thing? It was a little thin flimsy record, it was meant to play three or four times and five times and then not meant to work after that, it didn't have a long shelf life, it was a short recording. And he went in and he recorded a 33 minute talk. They played it, sales went up while he was gone. They played it the next week, sales went up again while he was gone. He came back. By the time he had gotten back, everyone who sold anything in the entire Chicago area was abuzz wanting a copy of this talk. He ended up recording the talk formally, pressing records and selling the records. And as best we can determine in research that we've done in the broadcast world, secular or church, this is one of the records that sold beginning in 1959. This is the first recorded talk, not music, but the first talk of any kind sermon or otherwise to sell a million copies. The talk was called "The Strangest Secret" And in it, he talks about the strangest secret is simply that you become what you think about. Now this is a biblical truth. In Proverbs, it says, "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A man becomes what he thinks about all day long." It turns out that what we focus on, what we concentrate on, what we think about, we tend to gravitate towards, move towards, become that. And if it's good or bad, we're gonna be pulled magnetically in the direction of the things we think about. You become what you think about is the strangest secret. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Henry Ford once said, "If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." Now this was proven several years ago, and this is a great old, another old story that I just love and it was proven in this instance. Now, any of you remember the book or the movie "Unbroken" about Louis Zamperini? He was a track star and he goes into World War II and gets in a Japanese concentration camp and finally gets out later, it's the story of his whole life, it's a wonderful story big old long book, "Unbroken", the book's better than the movie, it usually is right? So Louis ran in the Berlin Olympics with the Nazis doing this, Hitler is coming into power and he was a miler, he was a kid from California and in the Berlin Olympics, Louis ran the mile in four minutes and 21 seconds and just barely missed a medal. The miler that year was a little over four minutes. That was 1936. By 1954, no one had broken the four minute mile, no one. A guy did a four minute and one second and it stood for nine years. It was widely thought and taught that the human body, the physiological condition of the human body, it was impossible for anyone to train enough, to go fast enough for the human body to cross a mile in under four minutes. If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right. You become what you think about. And one doctor even said, prophesied that if someone actually did run a mile in under four minutes, that their heart would explode and they would die right there. Until 1954, Roger Bannister, famously, is the first human being, and that's a picture of him, to break the four minute mile, three minutes and 59 seconds. The record lasted 46 days. 22 people broke the four minute mile within the next six years. I've told this story and I love it so much so that the watch that was used by the old guy sitting there in the trenchc oat as Bannister went across the line, went up for sale on Sotheby's Auction House in London. Well, apparently I've got too much money because I decided I needed that watch. What a great story and what a great thing to have in my safe for my kids to fight over after I die. So I go to bidding on this watch, I set myself the limit of $10,000, and I was gonna go no more than $10,000 to buy this world class keepsake. I quit bidding at $38,000. I bought this one on eBay for four dollars, okay? If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. The power of intentionality, I'm gonna be intentional about my life. I'm gonna be intentional about my spiritual walk. I'm gonna be intentional about the dimensions and the compartments and the departments of my life. You know, no one accidentally wins. You don't interview the guy after the Super Bowl and the little reporter runs over to the athlete and goes, "How did you just win the World Series, the Super Bowl?" They never say, "I don't know, I just got off the bus. No, I've been training since I was six years old." It's an intentional act to win. And the power of intentionality goes with the power of belief in what we in our Christian walk call faith, what we believe. And we just did two years ago at Ramsey, the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. We studied 10,167 millionaires in depth, airtight research, because we knew people wouldn't like the results 'cause we kind of knew some of the things we were going to find and we knew that some people wouldn't like it. So we were really careful, we had outside research firm help us with the details and the control groups and the processes. If you know anything about research, it's a very detailed thing to do it properly and not get confirmation bias and these kinds of things in there, detailed thing. Here's the interesting thing, if you get somebody to say something, if like 60% of the people say something in a group like that, that's called statistically significant, right? Over half of them say this. 97% of the millionaires that we talked to, when we asked them, "Can you become a millionaire today? And when you first started, did you believe you could become a millionaire?" 97% said yes. If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. When we interviewed the general public that weren't millionaires, "Do you think you can become a millionaire?" 69%, still a lot, but significantly less than 97%, said that they thought they could. I wasn't planning to write another book this year for sure. I'm not that great a author anyway, I'm good at selling them, but I'm not that great a writer, but I got aggravated by two things that kept popping up in my face. One is I've been teaching these biblical principles to get out of debt, save money so that you can become wealthy so you can be outrageously generous, managing money for God, God's ways. And for your family is part of God's ways, right? And I've been teaching people this stuff for 30 years, and we call it the baby steps, you walk up the baby steps, you get out of debt, build your emergency fund, start your retirement, your kid's college, pay off your house, you're baby step seven, woohoo, we're free, we did it and we walk up through the baby steps. And I kept running into people all over America wherever I went and they would walk up and they'd go, "Hey Dave, I've been doing your stuff for like a long time, like I'm old, like I've been doing this 25 years, I've been listening to you and I'm a baby steps millionaire and I did it, I did it, the stuff you teach, I did it and it worked and I'm a millionaire. I followed the baby steps and I'm a millionaire, I'm a baby steps millionaire." And I kept running into these people everywhere and lots of 'em and then I was running into, I do a lot of media stuff and God help me, I actually sometimes look at social media, Lord Jesus, forgive me, and I kept seeing out there the hope stealers. Y'all ever seen the hope stealers? The people that will steal your hope, that tell you it can't be done? They're the ones that Eeyore is their spirit animal. "Oh, it's bad, America's over. You're never gonna be able to make it. It's bad. The little man can't get ahead." And I was running into these hope stealers everywhere and they're telling me no one can do it and sophisticated economists who were hope stealers and people in the media that were hope stealers and I'm talking to baby step millionaires that goes, "Dave, I did it." (audience applauding) 'Cause the hope stealers that are out there, the first thing they tell you is this, "All the rich people have all the money and the only way you get rich is to inherit your money." You heard that one, say yes. Well, here's the thing, that's a lie. No, I mean I've got data, facts, not your broke brother-in-law with an opinion, facts. Okay, when we studied these millionaires, 10,000 of them, 79% received precisely zero as an inheritance. That's eight out of 10. Five percent when they did get an inheritance, it was a little one, like four or 5,000 bucks, which does not make you a millionaire in case you didn't know the math. Another five percent received a big inheritance, like a couple of hundred thousand dollars after they were already millionaires so that didn't make them a millionaire. So five and five and 79 is 89. That's nine out of 10 millionaires in America today did it themselves, first generation rich with the blessings of God. (audience applauding) Well and your whiny little friend says, "But it's just not fair out there." It's not fair out there. The fair is where the Tilt-a-Whirl is and the prize pig. It's not fair. And, "Oh, it ought to be equal. Equal is fair." Not in the Bible. And by the way, equal's not fair. If you work 100 hours a week and the guy works 10 hours a week, you should get paid more. I got a face for radio. I got friends who are pretty and they're like on TV and stuff and they make more money 'cause they talk to more people than I talk to. That's not fair. I'm in Nashville. I've got all these music friends. I can't play, I'm in talk radio for a reason. I mean, I can't, I mean I got all these music friends and they sell 10 million albums. I've never even seen a album except one I put on the record, that's the only time, it's not fair that they make more money at albums than I make. Of course it is. They serve more people. They help more people with joy than I helped with that. If I sell 10 books and help 10 people get out of debt, I should make one set of money, that's fair. But if I sell 10 million, I should make another set of money, that's fair. Fair is not equal because effort, talent, education, bothering to show up is not equal. So don't let the whiners tell you, "Well, the game is rigged. The system's rigged." So I got to meet Condoleezza Rice, this woman is incredible. We were doing a leadership event and she came in to speak with us. She's unbelievably smart, her purse is smarter than I am. The woman, competition ice skater, world class concert pianist, second woman ever to be Secretary of State, first black woman ever to be Secretary of State, Provost of Stanford, grew up in a lower middle class family, an extremely racist situation in Birmingham, Alabama. In those days, they called it Bombingham because that's when all the bombing was happened with the racism. But she didn't defined, wasn't defined by that. She didn't say the system's rigged. Is racism real? Oh yes, racism is real. Is sexism real? Oh yes, it's real. We don't all have the same starting point to where we got to go. We don't all have the same starting point, and that's not fair, it just is. But Condoleezza said, her parents, what they taught her was that "It doesn't matter where you come from, all that matters is where you're going to." So yeah, I started a little further back. I'm from Antioch, Tennessee and I'm not from one of those cool families, I'm just a redneck hillbilly so I started a little further back. Some people started further back than that and they passed me. Did you know every single demographic, every single race we found in the study had become millionaires? Someone chose to go from where they started to believe I'm gonna be intentional, if you think you can, if you think you can't, you become what you think about. I'm going to aim at this, as a man thinketh in his heart so is he and I'm gonna go do it. (audience applauding) And then there are hope stealers among my brothers and sisters in Christ, the ones that are overs saved, you know 'em. "Christians shouldn't be wealthy. As a matter of fact, the Bible condemns the rich to hell." Have any of you heard this? Have you ever even thought it? I used to think it 'cause I kind of grew up in an area that was all Christian. I'm in Nashville, there's more Baptists there than people. And yet the scripture actually says this, "And you shall remember the Lord, your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth." The Bible does not say money is the root of all evil. It says the "love of money is the root of all evil." "Well Dave, you know Jesus said, "A camel can't get through the eye of a needle so a rich man can't get into heaven."" One of my pastor buddies says, "Don't let the world teach you theology." And I'll help you with that, for goodness sakes, don't let Twitter teach you doctrine. The most quoted scripture by the angry unbeliever Christian hater, "Don't you know that the rich aren't going to heaven because a camel can't get through the eye of a needle."? All you gotta do is just finish reading the context and Jesus goes on down, "'Cause the disciples were amazed. They said, "Well, who then can be saved?" And he says, "No one gets to the father except through the son."" (audience applauding) And so let me just be mean to you. Are you ready for me to be mean? Because it's a spiritual gift okay, so let me just be mean to you, if you believe with your toxic political beliefs or you believe with your toxic upbringing in Christianity that rich people aren't going to heaven because of that scripture, let me help you with that, that's what theologians call heresy. Now let me help you with heresy. Heresy is when anyone can't get to, what you're saying is prostitutes can go to heaven if they ask Jesus for forgiveness, drug dealers can go to heaven if they ask Jesus for forgiveness, murderers can go to heaven if they ask Jesus forgiveness, but not those rich people. Jesus' blood is not strong enough at the cross for those rich people. That's called heresy, technically speaking right if you're in seminary. Okay so don't practice in heresy on Twitter. Okay, it's bad for you. There's a lot of stuff on Twitter that's bad for you so just helping you with this. Here's an, "Well the evil one percent, they have all the money. They shouldn't have all the money." Oh God, here we go. Okay, I'm a math guy. So here's the thing, if you make $39,000 a year household income, you are in the top one percent of income earners in the world. You are officially going to hell. Well, this is how absurd this line of critical thinking is when you take your religion and you make it toxic to justify your victimization. Don't do it. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. I'm gonna be intentional about winning the Super Bowl. I might have a harder start, it might not have been good when I was growing up, people might be mean to me because of reasons they shouldn't be mean to me, but it doesn't matter, I'm still gonna go win the Super Bowl. I'm still not gonna quit. The Bible teaches cause and effect. We reap what we sow. And so if you plant corn, you will water it, put fertilizer around it if you're a farmer, hoe around it, keep the weeds out, and then you will get corn if God chooses to send the sun and the rain. Now Saint Andrew said, "We have to work like it all depends on us and pray like it all depends on God." So the Bible is a constant dance between our faith in God and his provision and our faithfulness, getting off your tail end and doing the work. So if you want some corn, you should plant corn. Aggravating Christians pray over mud holes that got no corn in them and can't figure out where the corn is when they have planted no corn. That's aggravating 'cause it makes Christians look stupid. Corn come forth. It's not going to. You're supposed to reap what you sow. Sow the corn, the corn will come. Lord, I pray for money. Try saving some. I'm joking around a little bit, but we've all heard this stuff and somehow we have to push back about it in our culture. I do believe God is a God of provision, he's a God of grace. I've walked in so much grace and among all the dumb things I've done in my life he's been so unbelievably good to me it makes me cry every time I think about it and I'm not in any way dissing that. I'm not in any way taking credit for success, but you have to work and those that don't work, Paul said they don't eat. And somehow we get these things all twisted up and somehow spiritualize our inactivity or the fact that we're paralyzed and we're overwhelmed and we're scared and we don't know what to do. And instead of plowing through that and busting through that and saying, "Someone take my hand and help me out of this hole" and your brothers and sisters come alongside you, lift you out, give you a shot at something, the community comes around you and loves you well. Don't forsake the gathering of believers. All these things are scripture and they all come together to cause us to be able to cause these things to happen in our lives. Our Christian life and the study of the Bible and the community that we walk in transforms our lives because we learn to plant new and better things into our life. And I have a thing I call the displacement theory. I learned it from my wife. My wife is kind of like pastor, she's kind of a health nut and like she's in perfect shape, she has zero body fat, which is simultaneously wonderful 'cause she's my wife, but look at me, it's also shaming, okay? So she goes and walks her six miles or 28 miles or whatever she does in the morning and works out four and a half hours or whatever the thing she does and then she comes in and puts stuff in a blender that humans should not ingest and thinks it's fun. And when she pours it into a glass, it looks like nuclear waste and it's good for you. And then she's got this little nuclear waste mustache and says, "Do do you want some?" And I'm like, "No." And she finishes drinking that nuclear waste and sets the glass in the sink, turns on the hot water and the hot water goes into the junk and the clean water as it runs begins to displace the trash. And if you let that glass, and you've done it before, that pan sit in the sink and just let the hot water run on it, it will boil the stuff out and in a few minutes, the clean has displaced the filth. This is the Christian walk. You put good stuff in, you will have good stuff in and it will push the trash from the past out. It will push the past out. Well people from my neighborhood, I don't care about your neighborhood, put some clean in. People that grew up like, I don't care, put some clean in. People that don't have a chance to start at life, shut up, put some clean in. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. If you think you can or think you can't, you're right. You can do this. It's called hope. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." "Be not conformed to this world. Don't be like them, but be transformed." How? Displacement, the renewing of your mind, new things coming in and it creates a new you, whole new way of looking at things. Sharon and I have been married almost 40 years. I'm really glad and she's really glad she ain't married to the guy she married. He's not perfect, but he's a whole lot better than that idiot she married 40 years ago. Displacement, I'm getting better, I'm getting better. Give me 40 more, I'll probably get it down. So what God wants for you is what I want for you. He wants you to get on a budget because Jesus said, "Don't build a tower without first counting the cost, lest you get halfway up and you're unable to finish and all who see begin to mock you and say, "This man began to build and was unable to finish."" You get on a budget so that you can live on less than you make 'cause "a foolish man devours all he has." You live on less than you make so you can get out of debt 'cause "the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender." You get out of debt so you've got money to save for an emergency 'cause "in house of the wiser, stores of choice, food and oil." Are you feeling the displacement yet? You take the savings that you begin to build up, that emergency fund, you're ready for a rainy day, and then of course, then you're ready to build some wealth and "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness." You can become a baby steps millionaire. And as you become wealthy, you can change your family tree 'cause "a godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children." And then as you do that, you become out outrageously generous because, "God loves a cheerful giver." By the way, that's the end of the game and that's the beginning of the game, outrageous generosity. The rest of the stuff in the middle is just how we get it done. See, I was at the supermarket the other day and I'll close up with this 'cause they told me the holy sprit leaves at the 30 minute mark. I don't go the supermarket very much, my wife, bless her heart, she does that most of the time. But when I do go, I'm kind of an efficiency expert. It's kind of a Nascar pit stop for me. Closest parking spot. Once I get my stuff, I'm scanning the lines. Have you ever done this? Okay, that line's a little longer, but that one checking out seemed like she's got her stuff going. I'm gonna get a little longer line, we're gonna get through there 'cause I'm picking the fastest line to get in and out, the whole game is in and out quick. Y'all with me, anybody do this but me? So I go in there the other day and I love generous people, generous people make us smile, generous people make our eyes leak, don't they? Now I go in there and I pick out the line and there's this woman in the line and she's got two kids who were everywhere over everything. Y'all know what I'm talking about. I'm old school, Father and Papa Dave here. And then she's got these groceries and she hands the guy her card and it's rejected. Well I hate to admit it, I was not looking compassionately upon this woman at first. I'm standing about three back and now when the card comes out, now that's the business I'm in, right? Helping people that the cards rejected. And then I start looking at the kids a little more careful and their clothes aren't very good. And then I look at her and windows are the eyes to the soul, or eyes are the windows to the soul, I'm sorry and she's not having a good week, she's not having a good year. You can see the pain. You ever done that? You look at somebody and you see it just dripping off of them? And then she hands him another card and the card is rejected and this whole thing is going down fast. Now I'd like to tell you that I was the generous one, but I was slow on the trigger because it took me a minute to recover from my initial self-righteousness, but standing, the guy right behind her was Superman. Now I didn't realize it was Superman 'cause he was dressed like a Hispanic construction worker with mud on his boots. But suddenly, Clark Kent comes out and he reaches up and pays for her groceries. She starts crying. The register lady starts crying. I start crying and I'm not even involved. And she's trying to say, "No, no, no, no, no." He can't understand anything, he speaks only Spanish, but he does speak card denied, he does speak having a bad year. 300 bucks goes up and he pays for groceries. This is why we do what we do 'cause you want to be that guy. Generous people make our eyes leak. Generous people make us smile 'cause we get to see God show up in the line at the grocery store. Put yourself in a position to be him for the rest of your life and try not to be self-righteous like me and beat him to the punch. Put yourself in a position to be outrageously generous. And then if somebody that's crazy is drinking Haterade because you became wealthy and you're incredibly generous, just tell 'em to have another serve. It's all good, drink your Haterade. Me and God, we're walking in generosity. He's letting me do this. It's the privilege of my entire life to be able to help others with money that he allowed me to manage. (audience applauding) You can do it. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. If you think you can or you think you can't, that's faith or the lack of it. You'll be right either way. Decide, you become what you think about. God, we thank you for your provision. We thank you for your guidance. We thank you for your love. Oh, you've lavished us beyond our wildest imaginations. Help us to be kind, to be self controlled, to be unbelievably generous and cheerful in giving that that you gave us to manage. In Jesus' name, amen. (audience applauding) Come on church, let's tell Dave thank you. (audience applauding) And Dave, thank you for living that. Dave has been more generous with our church than I could ever describe and this is who God is calling us to be and I just want to ask you right now because I know there's, anytime people talk about money, there can all can be a heaviness and a weight and a guilt and a shame and a I can't and I won't, but I think you just heard a word that can change the way you think. And how many of you really believe and think you can honor God with what he entrusts you with? Would you raise your hands right now? Leave 'em up for a minute, leave 'em up. Leave 'em up, all of our churches, if you're watching online right now, you put 'em up wherever you are right now in an act of worship and recognize that God is entrusting resources to you. He trusts you to steward them. And when you're faithful with a little, he'll trust you with even more. You can put your hands down. I'm gonna pray for you in just a moment, but let me just talk about how you can be faithful. You can start with Dave's book, "Baby Step Principles". Start with being faithful. Start by getting a plan. Work the plan and honor God and watch as God blesses you along the way. And as Dave says, you can live today like no one else, one day you can live and give like no one else and you can be that person at the grocery store and you can be that person in many people's lives if you're faithful. So God, today I pray for the faith to believe that you've given us what we need to honor you. Help us to be faithful God, to take a step, when it even seems like a small step, but take a step the next day. We thank you for Dave, we thank you for the way he teaches your principles that we can live in a way that honors you. Give us wisdom, give us faithfulness, God. I pray that there would be people that wouldn't just be baby step millionaires, but they'd be baby step millionaires who are generous beyond measure. Help us to start where we are, to honor you, and believe God, that as we're faithful, you'll pour out your blessings so that we can bless others. We pray this in Jesus' name. As you keep praying today, nobody looking around, just kind of an attitude of worship and prayer. When we talk about money, sometimes we're aware of where we've fallen short and where we haven't gotten it right, we've all messed up. When we talk about life, when we're in church, when we're watching a message, sometimes we're aware of our own sinfulness. We've all messed up. We've all fallen short. We have a debt, not just a financial debt, but we have a sin debt. But the amazing thing is we have a very generous God, for God so love the world that what did he do? He gave, he gave, he gave his one and only son, Jesus, that whosoever would believe in Jesus would not perish but instead would have eternal life. If you find yourself aware of your shortcomings, your sinfulness, we serve a God who showed his love on Earth through the person of Jesus. God became flesh. Jesus lived without sin, he gave his life and God raised him from the dead. So anybody, and this includes you, no matter how bad you failed, no matter what you've done, anyone who calls out on that name, the name that is above every name, the name of Jesus, your sins would be forgiven today. I believe there are those of you, you're watching online, you're watching it at church location, you know you need forgiveness. What are we gonna do? We're gonna step away from our old life and we're gonna become disciples of Jesus, we're gonna follow Jesus. When we confess our need for him, God forgives all of our sins, we become brand new today. Wherever you're watching from those who say yes, I want his forgiveness, I want his grace, today, I choose Jesus, I want to be his disciple. I give my life to him. Those of you, you know you need his forgiveness, today, you surrender, today, you give your life. That's your prayer today. Say yes, Jesus, I give my life to you, that's your prayer. Would you lift your hands high right now? Can you guys celebrate with me today as we see people at all of our churches walking away from the old life, walking towards a new life. Those of you online, you can just type it in the comment section, I'm choosing to follow Jesus. Just type it in the comment section, I'm choosing to follow Jesus and it's our great honor today to celebrate the moment that you experienced the grace of Jesus. We're gonna pray and you can just pray aloud wherever you are, we're all praying together. Pray, heavenly father, I need your grace, I need your forgiveness, I need Jesus. Jesus, save me. Forgive all of my sins. Make me brand new. I need your power. I need your spirit, to live for you, to show your love. Fill me with your spirit, that I can do your will. Give me the faith to know I can serve you, to make a difference. I surrender all of my life to you. Thank you for new life. In Jesus' name, I pray. Could you all celebrate big worship of good God is full of grace and love? (audience cheering)
